I play a number of roles in life: father, husband, former semi-professional bike blogger turned gentleman wordsmith of leisure… They’re all pretty important, too. But when it comes to sheer responsibility, none of them comes close to my official position as the Classic Cycle Old Crap Test Pilot.
Alas, I am deeply ashamed to say that of late I have been guilty of dereliction of duty. See, my current mission is to test this 1999 GT XCR 1000, seen here when I first received it back in April of this year:
I began testing it immediately, though there were a couple of obstacles I needed to overcome. Specifically, I needed to lengthen the front derailleur cable housing, and I needed to overhaul the rear shock:
Just kidding!
Commanding Officer Paul Johnson at Classic Cycle overhauled the shock. I didn’t do crap.
With all that done, I resumed testing…though I haven’t been on it for at least a month. Or could it be two months?!? I’m not certain, which is exactly why I should be keeping a journal. Anyway, between the lapse in testing and the wanton disregard for journaling you now see what I mean when I say I’m a derelict in the duty department.
Still, I do have my reasons, even if they are pretty feeble. For one thing, last time I rode the bike it was making a noise, so I told myself I’d look into it as soon as I had time, which I never did, even though I did subsequently find the time to overhaul both the Farman and the Homer. For another, I must admit I’m generally disinclined to go “mountain biking” during the dog days of the summer, when it’s hot and muggy and the woods feel like an Amazonian rainforest and you’re riding around with a halo of mosquitoes. In fact even Very Small Rocks riding can be unpleasant for this reason, which is why I invented the concept of the GVL LZRD:
But now autumn is approaching and recently the air has been cool, with even a hint of crispness, in that way that makes you thing of stuff like school supplies and cyclocross. Also, as it happens, I had to use THE CAR THAT I OWN AND STORE FOR FREE IN THE PUBLIC RIGHT OF WAY this morning. So yesterday morning I donned my uniform:
And made for the Forbidding Trails Behind The Mall:
Mind you, I had still not addressed the noise, but either it somehow fixed itself or I was having too much fun to notice–and I was having fun, quite a bit of it in fact. Maybe it was just the weather, or the fact that I hadn’t been properly off-road in awhile, or probably both, but the whole ride from beginning to end was almost preternaturally pleasant. So what about the bike, certainly that must have been a factor, right? Well, I’ll say this much: it certainly didn’t get in the way. Really, I didn’t think about the bike at all. I didn’t think about 26-inch versus 29-inch wheels, I didn’t think about turn-of-the-century geometry versus that of today, and I didn’t think about rime breaks versus dicks. I didn’t even think about suspension versus rigid, how about that? I just rode the bike that was under me and it worked.
Well, okay, fine, that’s not completely true. I did kind of think it would be fun to try the GT with a 1X drivetrain, like an Advent X or something:
So after bemoaning the loss of the front derailleur recently does this make me a hypocrite? No–well, I mean yes, I’m obviously a giant hypocrite, but not because of that. Not only was I specifically talking about road bikes (which is where the front derailleur truly shines), but also I was using 1X drivetrains on mountain bikes back when you still had to make them yourself:
But yes, on one hand putting a modern drivetrain on an old bike would be counter to the spirit of the exercise:
Yet on the other hand isn’t exploring the extent to which you can update an older bicycle in order keep it going in the modern era part and parcel of the Old Crap Test Pilot’s mission?
I dunno.
But I do know changing the drivetrain would require a modest amount of money as well as a modest amount of work, so it probably won’t be happening in the immediate future.
All I know that as the weather continues to cool and a busy autumn forces me to drive I’ll certainly be sneaking in more rides on the test-cycle.
Speaking of drivetrains, I’d actually go out of my way to avoid both 14-speed and electronic, but I’d also make an exception just to use one called “Whaleroad:”
Yes, Whaleroad is in fact a 1X drivetrain…
Whaleroad says its 1×14-speed cassette offers a 418 per cent gear range, spanning from an 11-tooth smallest sprocket to a 46-tooth largest sprocket.
The cassette fits a conventional Shimano HG freehub body, meaning there’s no change needed to proprietary standards.
Squeezing the extra gears into that space has seen the cogs on the bottom of the block become significantly narrower.
…and not Rapha’s new line for plus-sized riders, as you’d naturally expect. Indeed, Rapha’s failure to capitalize on this market could be why their CEO has resigned:
Now they’ll be making “significant organiZational changes to reduce cost:”
“To support that, the business will make significant organisational changes to reduce cost and drive efficiency, and those changes call for a different governance and leadership structure. With that in mind, I proposed to the board that I step down as CEO.
What Rapha really needs to do is the equivalent of killing the front derailleur, so perhaps they can reduce their offering to a single one-size-fits-all bodysuit:
It could be unisex, good for all weather, and you wouldn’t even need to spend extra for socks or gloves:
They should make me CEO, I’ll right that ship in no time. When we’re flush with cash I’ll then introduce an alt-cycling line called Ralfalpha:
The Little Rascals were the original Alt-Cyclists.